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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said in an interview Wednesday that “people need to work longer hours” to help grow the economy.
According to ABC News, Bush was asked a question about tax reform during an interview live streamed on Periscope, and said he believes the U.S. can achieve 4 percent growth.
“Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows,” Bush continued. “It means that people need to work longer hours.”

The Democratic National Committee said Bush’s remarks were “easily one of the most out-of-touch comments we’ve heard so far this cycle,” according to ABC.
According to a transcript sent by his campaign, Bush clarified his comments Wednesday night after a town hall event in New Hampshire.
Asked whether he was saying “somebody working two jobs needs to be working even more time,” Bush replied, “Absolutely not. Their incomes need to grow.”
He went on to say that “the simple fact is people are really struggling. So giving people a chance to work longer hours has got to be part of the answer. If not, you are going to see people lose hope. And that’s where we are today.”

Registered

I will work 10 hour days, as long as I only work 4 of them per week. I am sorry but 40 hours away from home a week is enough, and some of us work way more than that 40. I guess good ole Jeb doesnt have a family he wants to see or get home to. Or maybe a kid he only gets to see every so many days and wants to spend as much time with them as possible. **** politicians. Thats all they want. More work from the working man while the rich and powerful get to sit in their ivory towers and sip on Whiskey and Wine. I am sorry, but what this economy needs is for the gov to stop spending money on useless **** or giving it to other countries. How about we work on getting our unemployment rate down, and get the homeless who are skilled at something making money. That just might drive the economy up. Or here is another solution, stop taxing the common man to death that way we have more to spend. Spending money drives a higher economy. Nope, a politicians answer is **** the common man, work him to the bones.

Premium Member

I work on avg 58-62 hours a week. I am on obama side in this topic. The answer is higher tax on the rich. I good documentary for this is titled "inequality for all". I really need to be compensated for my time better than what I am. Or make the same money and work less hours.

Administrator

Americans, in general, work longer hours than any other industrialized nation. We even throw away up to half our vacation time. The Democratic National Committee's response was right on. My question to Governor Bush is if work force participation is at an all time low how does it help to have the current work force work longer hours. Wouldn't it make more sense to modify our tax code to stop penalizing employers who hire more people?

Registered

The secret to more GDP is productive work hours. There's way too many "administrators" these days having non productive meetings. Then they actually have more meetings to schedule other meetings. Yes it's insane but true, and they think these meetings are great because they don't have to actually work. The ratio of actual workers to admins is probably 1:1 these days. Also factory jobs have been outsourced to other countries. Service sector jobs are not factored into GDP.

Banned

Ha, try working for a salary, while your pay is based on a 40 hour week, some expect you to put in 120 hours. How about working until midnight on Christmas or New Years Eve. Dead tired and want to put your kid's toys out for Christmas day. Why are you tired daddy? Santa brings the toys and why didn't you buy me present?

Registered

Ha, try working for a salary, while your pay is based on a 40 hour week, some expect you to put in 120 hours. How about working until midnight on Christmas or New Years Eve. Dead tired and want to put your kid's toys out for Christmas day. Why are you tired daddy? Santa brings the toys and why didn't you buy me present?

This!!! In March of 2014 my dept did a huge computer refresh. We worked 27 out of 31 days in March. I barely got to see my kid because I was traveling every other weekend. We would work regular hours during the week but then on the weekends we didnt get out until after 9pm or a lot later. What was our compensation for it? An extra vacation day and a $150 gift card. Now to me that is just a company taking advantage of its salary workers. Luckily it was only for 1 month. I do know that we put in a lot more hours most weeks though.

Registered

Taxing the rich more never works never will, many don't have true Income like working people. You need to lower taxes on everyone and everyone pay the same percentage. We really need the fair tax, this way everyone pays when they purchase something. All the hidden taxes would be gone. Companies pay taxes even if they don't make money, really bad on small companies and we could get rid of most of the IRS since we wouldn't need it with its current work force. These people will be able to find jobs in the private sector because it would be booming. The problem is our current tax system is geared to only help the rich and greedy politicians. The other issue all these welfare policies keep the poor on the system by not giving them a reason to work.

Its also has been proven before lower taxes and the government gets more taxes. However the politicians see more money being made and then raise taxes then we have the slow down again.

Premium Member

millionaires typically pay 11-15% taxes we pay 30% how is that fair?
The other problem is that super wealthy dont spend a ton of money. So the majority of the money just stays with them. If you look at our history the disparity is much narrower during a high taxing of wealthy individuals. Reagan made taxes on the 1% drop by 30%. At the same time you will notice unions flat line, incomes flat line and cost of goods rise. From that caused women to enter the work place to compensate, than credit cards were sent in to help, next was investing in homes which created a giant bubble. Our economy has never been better we are the richest and most succesfull nation of all time yet there are people who make LESS than someone did in the 70s with inflation factored in. In our country only 46% percentage of children born in poverty will get out, germany 23%. Look at how they invest in education. In the 70's Burkeley univ cost $700 INFLATION CORRECTED NUMBER! Now is $15000 a year??????? What the **** man. If you really believe that the 1% are job creators you live in fantasy land. If you own a big business what is your main goal??????Profit!! What is your second goal?Cut costs.... What are your main costs people. Havent you noticed more and more people being replaced by machines? Amazon 700billion dollar enterprise has 60,000 workers. If amazon was run like an avg retail location the number of employed would be 600000+. This super giant businesses have super clean efficient models that minimize cost and maximize profit. So dont tell me we shouldnt tax a guy that make 8-9 figures a year that he shouldnt pay more.

Banned

I work on avg 58-62 hours a week. I am on obama side in this topic. The answer is higher tax on the rich. I good documentary for this is titled "inequality for all". I really need to be compensated for my time better than what I am. Or make the same money and work less hours.

Working overtime is not good either, with a bit of extra pay, puts you in a higher wage class so if you have a kid in college, don't receive additional aid. One year we were about a thousand over the limit so kid lost a $5,000 grant, had to pay more taxes but was another $4,000.00 in a hole.

Wife's hospital job is limited to 40 hours a week, don't want to pay overtime, she is a medical interpreter, so when her eight hours is up, they have to use the language line that costs them six bucks per minute or 360 bucks per hour. Wonder what idiot came up with this? Must have flunked second grade math. Many times, just talking about an extra 20 minutes.

Registered

Seems like the solution to competing with up and coming manufacturing from 3rd World Countries is to make the USA a 3rd World Country.

We have the far left wanting us to give more to those who refuse to work and the far right wanting us to work more hours for less money so that those that are wealthy enough to not have to work can make more money not working.

We need a "None Of The Above" selection in the voting booth. They are all bums.

Premium Member

Our govt needs to regulate wall street and big business on lobbying. Can you honestly tell me a that a giant corp allowed to spend millions on a candidate doesnt have the slightest influence on the laws, money is the root of all evil and in 2010 the supreme court allows a business to fund a campaign ......A BUSINESS! Thats BS a company can not vote!

Premium Member

Seems like the solution to competing with up and coming manufacturing from 3rd World Countries is to make the USA a 3rd World Country.

We have the far left wanting us to give more to those who refuse to work and the far right wanting us to work more hours for less money so that those that are wealthy enough to not have to work can make more money not working.

We need a "None Of The Above" selection in the voting booth. They are all bums.

Registered

How are you going to tax someone that holds on too their money. That's there choice. that would be like taxing you for holding on to your money. Rich people do spend lots of money. It just doesn't seem like it. Fair tax would fix all of this, problem is people can't get their head around the idea because you hear a 23% sales tax. You are paying a lot more than that now. Competition will bring prices down and the government would even get more money. They even have a rebate in the plan for the low income to get money back. Nobody would technically ever getting paid under the table because when they purchase something they will pay a tax.

You need to revisit history. We had another depression before the great depression that is hardly known. You know why because the president at that time saw what was happening and immediately cut taxes and everything rebounded quickly. Then the next president saw how good people had it and raised taxes, greedy politicians. Then the great depression started. I do know it was in the 20's just don't know the president off the top of my head.

Problem is we like to erase history like we are trying to do by removing the Confederate flag.

You will always have income disparity. Just like poor people. However taxing people differently is not fair 10 percent is 10 percent.

If you think we should tax people differently did I guess we should start charging a higher percentage sales tax on more expensive items. See how fast that kills the economy.

Administrator

Actually Reagan did drop the top tax rate but also eliminated the loophole that allowed the super wealthy to legally take income earned in the US and move it off-shore. The result was more revenue to the Federal Government.

A flat rate tax with a standard deduction, say the Federal Minimum Wage. would eliminate the necessity for tax advisors and a large portion of the IRS. For unearned income, it's all tax free up to the point where it meets your earned income, then it becomes taxed at the same rate. This also meets the progressive's desire for a tax that hits higher earners harder as well as deals with trust funds where the recipient doesn't need to work. Non-US Citizens working in the US don't get the Minimum Wage Deduction. Before anyone claims that I'm being unfair to non-US Citizens, remember, I'm a US Citizen and don't expect any other country to give me the same employment/tax rules as they give their own citizens.

Here's an example using 10% tax on anything over $10,000 earned income:

Income

Taxable

Tax

Effective Rate

10,000.00

0.00

0.00

0.00%

11,000.00

1,000.00

100.00

0.91%

20,000.00

10,000.00

1,000.00

5.00%

50,000.00

40,000.00

4,000.00

8.00%

100,000.00

90,000.00

9,000.00

9.00%

250,000.00

240,000.00

24,000.00

9.60%

1,000,000.00

990,000.00

99,000.00

9.90%

Any unearned income above the Income column would be taxed at the same 10%. This allows you to save as much as you earn, but if you live off a trust fund and you receive a $5,000 stipend each month that trust fund's stipend is considered unearned income. If you don't earn anything yourself that entire $5,000 would be taxable at 10%.

For businesses, take their US sourced profits and subtract the earned income (W-2, 1099, but not 1099-DIV and associated unearned variants) paid to US Citizens. Tax 10% of the remainder. If the business paid more in US wages than they earned in the US, their US tax is zero. Businesses don't get to subtract the wages paid to non-US citizens nor do they get to subtract items such as stock options to executives. Get rid of the byzantine depreciation rules businesses have to navigate, making technology investments now purely a business decision vs. a political one.

You notice there are no deductions or special handouts such as charity and Earned Income in this code. Both are forms of welfare - the charitable deduction is indirect welfare - taxpayers paying a portion of their taxes to non-profits and the Earned Income Credit is pure welfare. If Congress wants to have a welfare program, fine - make it explicit, but the tax code is about revenue, not spending. Welfare is spending. What's interesting is the home mortgage deduction brings most homeowners into the 8 to 11% effective tax rate range. Renters at the same income level pay a higher effective tax rate as a result. This form also eliminates the need for the Alternative Minimum Tax because it explicitly deals with unearned income. It also eliminates the distinction between tax deferred investments and regular investments - you can double your earned income through investments and not pay taxes on it.

I know the hard core liberals will decry this as not being progressive enough because it doesn't "soak" the wealthy. The reality is there are so many loopholes in the current tax code that these folks pay less than someone earning $40 or $50 thousand a year. These loopholes, while technically available to lower earnings, are not financially feasible until you top four or five hundred thousand annual income. The result is today's progressive tax code with loopholes has effective tax rates of 1 to 5% for the wealthy. The flip side of this is that under the current tax code it's possible to receive a pay raise and end up with less take home because it bumped you into a higher tax bracket. This cannot happen with a flat tax rate. Setting the annual non-taxable amount equal to the Federal Minimum Wage forces politicians to face the reality that a minimum wage only helps the very bottom economic tier, and even then only marginally.

Super Moderator

I'm going out on a limb here but I did interpit Bush's remarks as ......well here is how what he said applies to me.

I am retired, on paper.....I collect SS.
However, I still work.
Sounds nuts but after I retired, my body and brain, accustomed to the everyday interaction of being somewhere, doing something, started, IMO, falling apart......physically I lost strength and flexibility, mentally, I was loosing sharpness.

Thats when I concluded a active person, used to continual activity, would be wise to not retire unless you have many things that can keep you active and sharp witted.
I concluded that actual retirement, and the much lower physical and mental needs that come with it, are a major factor in why folks rarely make much more than five to eight years after they retire.......I concluded that retirement is a rapid path to a pine box.

I decided I'm going with my boots on and re-entered the job market....more on my terms though.

I've mentioned my son owns a demolition company.......I work for my son repairing machines and small equipment.
The current system, however, is configured so that I cannot work more than thirty hours a week for any one employer, otherwise they have to provide insurance.
Trouble with that is, I'm on medicare....a must take plan that kicks in at age 65......so, I don't need insurance per se'.
If I exceed 30 hours, my employer would have to provide insurance (not cheap at 65) on TOP of medicare.......ain't gonna happen and thanks.....this was a Obummer program BTW.

So, I also part time at a friends shop (in case you wondered where a lot of my info comes from) and do light automobile service......same time/insurance constraint problem.

So, our current system essentially does not allow me to work the amount of time I would like to.
My son could easily come up with fourty or more hours a week....so could my buddy that owns the shop......but they (and I) are hobbled by the system.

I almost felt as though Bush's remarks were specific to my situation until I thought about several, slightly younger friends that work at the various stores in the area.
All have had their hours cut just so the employers can escape the insurance debacle...all have been cut to less than 30hours.

And, several have taken the two part time job route......but in their case, they have no alternative....they need the dough.

I'm fairly confident Bush was likely referring to the current constraints and weekly hour limits that have been created.
In truth, you can't really believe 'work more hours' was directed to those that are unaffected by the constraints I mentioned....there are only so many hours in a day.

Premium Member

How are you going to tax someone that holds on too their money. That's there choice. that would be like taxing you for holding on to your money. Rich people do spend lots of money. It just doesn't seem like it. Fair tax would fix all of this, problem is people can't get their head around the idea because you hear a 23% sales tax. You are paying a lot more than that now. Competition will bring prices down and the government would even get more money. They even have a rebate in the plan for the low income to get money back. Nobody would technically ever getting paid under the table because when they purchase something they will pay a tax.

Premium Member

You need to revisit history. We had another depression before the great depression that is hardly known. You know why because the president at that time saw what was happening and immediately cut taxes and everything rebounded quickly. Then the next president saw how good people had it and raised taxes, greedy politicians. Then the great depression started. I do know it was in the 20's just don't know the president off the top of my head.

Problem is we like to erase history like we are trying to do by removing the Confederate flag.

You will always have income disparity. Just like poor people. However taxing people differently is not fair 10 percent is 10 percent.

If you think we should tax people differently did I guess we should start charging a higher percentage sales tax on more expensive items. See how fast that kills the economy.

I am not talking about flags here. It is impossible for me to to only pay 11% tax I make less than 75k a year If I made 18 million i would be able to pay between 10-15% how is that fair? The sad part is that you are defending the people holding you down.

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